What a Hazing Settlement With One Family Actually Means for the Case
You are reading about a settlement in a hazing lawsuit out of Youngstown, and the first question that hits you is not about the money. It is: is this case over? No. It is not. When the family of one former player settles, one piece of a larger case has resolved — one defendant, one layer of responsibility, one chapter. The school, the coaches, the institution that was supposed to keep your child safe — they are still in this case. And if your child was hazed on a football team in Ohio, the same law that gave that family their settlement is the same law that protects yours.
We are Attorney911 — The Manginello Law Firm. We are trial attorneys who take hazing cases, and right now we are litigating an active $10 million hazing lawsuit against a university and a fraternity in Harris County, Texas. That case and the one you are reading about share the same architecture: a child was harmed inside a culture that adults built, adults tolerated, and adults failed to stop. The law in Ohio is built to hold those adults accountable — and the settlement you just read about is proof that it works.
Here is the first thing you need to know, and it is a gift we can give you before you ever pick up the phone: settling with one defendant in a multi-defendant hazing case is a strategic move, not a surrender. It narrows the battlefield. It frees up resources. It removes one layer of the defense and lets the full weight of the case focus on the institution that had the duty, the knowledge, and the power to prevent what happened to your child. That is not the end of a lawsuit. It is the sharpening of one.
Ohio’s Anti-Hazing Law: The Statute That Gives Your Family a Civil Case
Ohio wrote a specific law for exactly what happened to your child. It is not a general negligence theory we are stretching to fit — it is a statute that names hazing by name and gives you a direct civil cause of action.
Ohio Revised Code § 2307.44 specifically authorizes civil actions for hazing damages, including attorney fees.
That single line changes everything about how a hazing case is valued and fought. It means the legislature decided that hazing is not “boys being boys,” not “team bonding gone too far,” not an unfortunate accident. It is a recognized civil wrong with its own cause of action, and the law lets a court award attorney fees on top of the damages — which means the cost of fighting the school does not come out of your family’s recovery.
But Ohio did not stop there. In 2021, the state legislature passed Collin’s Law — House Bill 110 — the most significant expansion of Ohio’s anti-hazing regime in a generation. Collin’s Law increased the criminal severity classifications for hazing, expanded the definition of hazing to include coerced acts that create a substantial risk of mental and physical harm, and imposed heightened reporting and prevention requirements on educational institutions. For a hazing case at a school like Ursuline in Youngstown, Collin’s Law is the regulatory backbone: it establishes what the school was required to do, what it was required to report, and what policies it was required to have in place — before your child was ever harmed.
The interaction between the two is where the case lives. The statute gives you the civil cause of action. Collin’s Law defines the standard of care the school was supposed to meet. When the school’s actual conduct falls below that standard — when policies existed on paper but were never enforced, when coaches knew about a hazing culture and looked the other way, when prior incidents were quietly handled internally instead of being reported as the law requires — the gap between what the law demanded and what the school did is the breach. That breach is your case.
The Ohio High School Athletic Association and the Ohio Department of Education also mandate anti-hazing policies and safety protocols that extend to psychological well-being. If the hazing involved sexual harassment or gender-based conduct, federal Title IX regulations may create an additional layer of institutional duty. Every one of these regulatory regimes is a separate yardstick the school can be measured against — and each one it violated is a separate theory of liability.
The Statute of Limitations: How Long You Have
Ohio gives you two years from the date of the injury to file a personal injury lawsuit. For a child, that clock is tolled — it does not start running until the minor turns eighteen. So a fifteen-year-old hazed during football season would generally have until their twentieth birthday to file. But the deadline to file and the deadline to preserve evidence are two completely different clocks, and the evidence clock is the one that can kill your case quietly if you wait. The two-year window is generous. The evidence window is not.
Ohio’s Damages Framework: What the Law Allows You to Recover
Ohio’s non-economic damages — pain and suffering, emotional distress, loss of enjoyment of life — are generally capped under Ohio law at the greater of $250,000 or three times the economic damages, up to a maximum of $350,000 per person, unless the injury is catastrophic. That cap matters, but it is not the ceiling it appears to be for three reasons: first, economic damages (counseling, medical costs, tuition loss, lost earning capacity) are uncapped. Second, if the psychological injury is severe enough to meet the statutory definition of catastrophic, the non-economic cap lifts entirely. Third, punitive damages — which are available in Ohio when a defendant acted with actual malice or reckless disregard — sit outside the non-economic cap framework and can substantially increase the total recovery when the evidence shows the school ignored known red flags.
Who Is Liable: The Four Layers of Defendants in a School Hazing Case
A hazing case is never one defendant. It is a stack — and the settlement you read about resolved just one layer. Here is the full map of who can be held accountable, and why each layer is a different fight with a different source of money behind it.
Layer One: The Participating Student-Athletes
The players who committed the hazing are the first layer. They face direct claims for assault, battery, and intentional infliction of emotional distress. Their conduct was not accidental — it was intentional, and the law treats it that way. But the practical reality is that a high school student’s personal assets are minimal. The real money behind this layer comes from their parents’ homeowners’ insurance, which may provide coverage for certain acts, and from Ohio’s statutory parental liability for the intentional torts of minors. A typical homeowners’ policy runs $100,000 to $300,000 in liability coverage — enough to be meaningful, but not enough to fully compensate a serious hazing injury. The settlement with one ex-player’s family you read about likely lived within this range, bounded by that policy limit.
Layer Two: The Parents of the Participating Students
Under Ohio law, parents can bear statutory liability for the intentional torts of their minor children. This is not a negligence theory — it is a statutory duty. If a parent knew or should have known their child was engaging in hazing behavior and failed to intervene, the negligence claim against the parent is separate from the intentional tort claim against the child. This layer is where the homeowners’ insurance tower sits, and it is the layer most likely to produce early settlements — because the insurance carrier has a financial incentive to resolve the claim before discovery reveals the full scope.
Layer Three: Ursuline High School and the Diocese of Youngstown
This is the institutional defendant, and it is where the real value of a hazing case lives. Ursuline High School is a private Catholic institution operating under the Diocese of Youngstown, which means litigation involves complex layers of institutional and ecclesiastical liability. The school owes your child a duty of reasonable care that includes supervision, the implementation and enforcement of anti-hazing policies, and the maintenance of a safe environment for students participating in extracurricular activities. The Diocese, as the overseeing entity, may carry separate insurance coverage and may bear vicarious liability for the school’s failures.
The theories against the institution are powerful: negligent supervision — the school failed to exercise reasonable care in overseeing the locker room, the team activities, and the spaces where hazing occurred. Failure to implement anti-hazing policies — if the school had policies on paper but never trained staff, never enforced them, and never investigated complaints, the policies are a defense exhibit, not a defense. Premises liability — the school failed to maintain a safe environment for invitees (students) on school property. And the statutory hazing violation under ORC § 2307.44 — a direct cause of action against any person or organization that permits or participates in hazing.
The institutional defendant’s coverage tower is typically far larger than any individual family’s homeowners’ policy. A private school and its governing diocese may carry commercial general liability coverage, excess layers, and potentially umbrella policies that run into the millions. This is why the case continues after one family settles — the institutional money is still on the table, and it is where the case value climbs from a policy-limit settlement into the seven-figure range.
Layer Four: Coaching Staff and the Athletic Director
The coaches and the athletic director are the adults who were closest to the danger. They had the duty to supervise students, to report known or suspected hazing, and to intervene when the culture of the locker room turned dangerous. If coaches knew about the hazing culture — and in a football program where hazing is systemic, they almost always did — and failed to act, they face direct negligence claims alongside the school’s vicarious liability for their conduct. Collin’s Law’s reporting requirements make this layer especially vulnerable: if the law required them to report and they did not, the failure to report is itself a violation that powers the civil case.
The Evidence Clock: What Disappears and How Fast
This is the section that decides whether your case is strong or whether it evaporates. Hazing evidence is perishable — it dies on clocks measured in days and weeks, not years. Every record that proves what happened to your child, who knew about it, and when they knew it is on a countdown right now.
Text Messages and Social Media: The Fastest-Dying Evidence
The single most important evidence in a hazing case is often digital: group chats where the hazing was planned, Snapchats where it was bragged about, Instagram messages where victims were threatened into silence, TikTok videos that documented the abuse. This evidence is fragile in the extreme. Snapchat stories disappear in twenty-four hours by design. Group chats get deleted when someone senses trouble. Instagram DMs can be erased with a swipe. The overwrite window is not months — it is days, sometimes hours.
When we take a hazing case, one of the first moves is a preservation demand directed at every platform and every individual involved — a formal letter that orders the preservation of all digital communications and puts the recipients on notice that destruction after receipt of the letter is spoliation, which a court can punish with adverse inference instructions telling the jury to assume the worst about what was deleted. That letter has to go out in days, not seasons.
School Disciplinary Records: What Can Be “Lost”
The school’s own disciplinary files are the proof of notice — evidence that the school knew about prior hazing incidents, prior complaints, prior warnings. These records establish the pattern that transforms a single incident into institutional negligence. But school disciplinary records can be purged during administrative cycles, reclassified, or simply “cannot be located” when a lawsuit begins. A preservation letter directed to the school’s administration, naming the specific records by category, is the countermeasure. The day you call us is the day that letter gets drafted.
Coach Communications: The “Cleanup” Risk
Emails and text messages between coaches are the proof of institutional knowledge. If coaches exchanged messages about the locker room culture, about prior hazing complaints, about “handling things internally” instead of reporting them — those communications are the smoking gun in a case against the school. They are also subject to routine retention policies that can see them deleted on fixed schedules. The preservation demand has to reach the school’s IT department and name email servers, network logs, and coach communication records specifically.
Witness Statements: The Code of Silence
Other players on the team are witnesses. But team loyalty, fear of retaliation, and the natural fading of memory all work against you over time. The players who saw what happened to your child know the truth — but the longer they sit with it, the more the code of silence tightens. Witness statements taken early, while memories are fresh and before the team’s loyalty culture has time to close ranks, are worth ten times what they will be worth six months from now. This is why the investigation has to start immediately, not after the family has “had time to think about it.”
What a Hazing Case Is Worth in Ohio
We will not tell you what your case is worth until we have seen the evidence, because every case is built from its own facts. But the framework for valuation is something you deserve to understand now, not later.
The Damages Categories
Economic damages are the calculable money losses: past and future psychological counseling, which can run from $5,000 to $50,000 or more per year depending on the severity and duration of treatment needed. Medical expenses for any physical injuries sustained during the hazing. Tuition loss if your child was forced to transfer schools. And, in severe cases, lost earning capacity — if the psychological damage is significant enough to impair your child’s future ability to work and earn at the level they would have reached without the injury. These economic damages are uncapped under Ohio law.
Non-economic damages are the human losses: pain and suffering, emotional distress, loss of enjoyment of life, and the reputational harm that follows a child who was humiliated and degraded by teammates they trusted. These are capped under Ohio law at the greater of $250,000 or three times economic damages, up to $350,000 per person — unless the injury is catastrophic, in which case the cap lifts.
Punitive damages are available when the defendant’s conduct was more than negligent — when it showed actual malice or a reckless disregard for your child’s safety. If the school ignored prior hazing complaints, if coaches were told and did nothing, if the institution tolerated a culture of abuse it knew was dangerous, the punitive damages theory becomes a live weapon. Punitive damages are not capped by the non-economic damages framework and can materially increase the total case value.
The Case Value Range
Based on the framework above and the characteristics of high school hazing litigation in Ohio: individual defendant settlements — like the one you read about — are typically bounded by the parents’ homeowners’ insurance policy limits, generally in the $100,000 to $300,000 range. The total case value against the institution, depending on the severity of the abuse, the evidence of prior knowledge by coaches and administrators, and the strength of the institutional betrayal narrative, can range from approximately $150,000 on the low end to $1,250,000 or more on the high end. Cases with clear evidence of actual malice — documented prior complaints that were ignored, internal communications showing knowledge of the danger — push toward the top of that range and beyond, especially if punitive damages are pursued.
These figures are honest estimates based on the legal framework, not promises. Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes.
The Psychological Injury: Why Hazing Trauma Is a Medical Diagnosis
The most dangerous word in a hazing case is “mild.” If a doctor, a school nurse, or an insurance adjuster calls what happened to your child a “mild” psychological injury, that word will follow the case into every negotiation. It is a triage word, not a prognosis. And it is the word the defense will use to shrink the value of what your child went through.
Hazing produces real, diagnosable psychological injury. Post-traumatic stress disorder is a formal medical diagnosis with eight separate diagnostic criteria under the DSM-5, and a child who was subjected to physical and psychological abuse by teammates they trusted has to meet every one of them: the traumatic event itself, the intrusive memories and nightmares that follow, the avoidance of places and people that trigger the memory, the negative changes in mood and cognition, the hyperarousal and hypervigilance, the duration of more than a month, and the functional impairment that wrecks their ability to function at school, at home, and in relationships.
The defense playbook against psychological injury is predictable: they will say the child is exaggerating. They will say the symptoms are pre-existing — that the child was already anxious or depressed. They will say there is no objective evidence, because there is no X-ray for trauma. Every one of these arguments has a medical answer, and the answer lives in the records built from day one: the first therapy intake note, the clinical diagnosis from a licensed mental health provider, the validated screening instruments like the PCL-5 that measure PTSD symptoms objectively, and the testimony of people who knew the child before and can describe the change. Brain injury and psychological trauma cases are fought on the medical evidence, not the adjuster’s opinion.
If your child is showing signs of psychological injury — withdrawal, sleep disruption, anxiety, depression, reluctance to return to school or sports, personality changes — the medical record has to start now, not after the lawsuit is filed. A clinical diagnosis contemporaneous with the event is the single most powerful rebuttal to the “she’s faking for money” defense. It pre-dates any litigation motive and establishes the injury timeline in a way no later evaluation can match.
The Defense Playbook: What the School Will Argue and How We Answer
Every hazing case hits the same defense playbook. The school’s lawyers and their insurance adjusters have a script. Here is what they will say, and here is what the law says back.
Play One: “The School Had Anti-Hazing Policies”
The school will wave its anti-hazing policy around like a shield. We had a written policy. We distributed it to students. We met our duty. The answer: a policy on paper that was never enforced, never trained on, and never investigated is not a defense — it is an exhibit. Having a policy is not the same as implementing it. If the hazing was systemic, if it happened repeatedly, if multiple players were involved over multiple seasons, the policy’s existence proves the school knew the danger was foreseeable and chose paper over action.
Play Two: “Your Child Assumed the Risk” or “Participated Voluntarily”
The defense will try to paint your child as a willing participant. He knew about the tradition. He went along with it. He didn’t complain. The answer: a minor cannot consent to hazing. Ohio law does not let a child assume the risk of being abused by teammates. And the “code of silence” that hazing culture enforces — the threats, the social ostracism, the fear of being labeled a “snitch” — means that “he didn’t complain” is not the same as “he consented.” Tonic immobility — the involuntary freeze response where the body locks up and the voice goes silent under threat — is a documented, physiological reaction, not a choice.
Play Three: “The School Didn’t Know”
The school will claim ignorance. We had no reports. No one told us. This was the first time. The answer: in a football program where hazing is systemic, the school almost always knew. The evidence that proves it lives in the school’s own files — disciplinary records, prior parent complaints, coach communications, internal incident reports. If those records show prior incidents that were handled quietly instead of being reported as Collin’s Law requires, the “we didn’t know” defense collapses. And if the records were destroyed or “cannot be located” after we demanded their preservation, the court can instruct the jury to assume the worst about what they contained.
Play Four: The Quick Settlement Offer Before the Full Scope Is Known
This is the most dangerous play. The insurance adjuster may contact your family early — before you have a lawyer, before the full extent of your child’s psychological injury is diagnosed, before the school’s internal records have been produced — and offer a check that sounds large but is a fraction of what the case is worth. The check will come with a release attached. Once you sign it, the case is over. Every defendant, every theory, every dollar of future care — gone. The counter: never accept a settlement offer before the medical picture is complete and the institutional records have been examined. The first offer is designed to close the case cheaply, not to make your family whole.
How We Build the Case: From Preservation Letter to Verdict
Here is what actually happens when we take a hazing case — the chronological walk from the day you call to the day a jury hears the evidence.
Week one. The preservation letter goes out — to the school, to the individual defendants’ families, to every digital platform where evidence might exist. That letter names every category of record we need preserved: text messages, social media posts, school disciplinary files, coach emails, internal incident reports, CCTV footage from the school, witness contact information. The letter puts every recipient on formal notice that destruction of those records after receipt is spoliation, and spoliation has consequences in court.
Weeks two through four. The medical record is built. If your child has not already been seen by a licensed mental health provider, we help connect them with one. The clinical evaluation, the diagnostic testing, the treatment plan — all of it becomes the contemporaneous medical evidence that defeats the “she’s faking” defense. A life-care planner may be engaged to project the future cost of counseling and treatment across your child’s lifetime.
Months one through three. We file the lawsuit and serve discovery — formal demands for the school’s internal records, the coaches’ communications, the disciplinary history, the prior incident reports. The school’s lawyers will resist. We push. The records that come out in discovery are where the case is won or lost. If the school produced emails showing coaches knew about the hazing culture and discussed it among themselves, that is the institutional betrayal the jury needs to hear about. If the disciplinary records show prior complaints that were never reported as Collin’s Law requires, that is the reckless disregard that opens the door to punitive damages.
Months three through six. Depositions. The coaches sit across the table and answer questions under oath. The athletic director explains what he knew and when. The participating students are questioned about the hazing, the planning, the culture. School administrators are asked about the policies, the training, the enforcement — or the absence of all three. The deposition transcripts are where the defense’s story falls apart, because under oath, the gap between what the school says publicly and what its employees actually knew becomes visible.
Month six and beyond. We retain a school safety and administration expert — a professional who can testify that the school’s supervision fell below the national standard of care, that its anti-hazing policies were inadequate or unenforced, and that the harm to your child was foreseeable and preventable. The expert’s testimony translates the institutional failure into language a jury can use to measure what the school owed and what it failed to deliver.
The number at the end of this process is built from all of it — the medical evidence, the discovery documents, the deposition testimony, the expert opinion, and the story of a child who was failed by the institution his family trusted with his safety. That number is not a guess. It is the arithmetic of the harm.
The First 72 Hours: What to Do Now
If your child has been hazed, the clock has already started. Here is what to do in the first seventy-two hours.
Get the medical evaluation started. If your child is showing any signs of psychological injury — withdrawal, sleep disruption, anxiety, personality change, reluctance to return to school — get them to a licensed mental health provider immediately. The clinical record that starts now is the proof that the injury is real, contemporaneous, and connected to the hazing. A diagnostic evaluation performed weeks or months after the event is always more vulnerable to the “what else happened in between” defense than one done in the first days.
Do not sign anything from the school. If the school offers to “resolve this internally,” presents a disciplinary agreement, or asks you to sign an acknowledgment of any kind, do not sign. Anything you sign can be used to limit the school’s liability or to create a record that your family accepted the school’s handling of the situation. Talk to a lawyer first.
Do not post about the case on social media. The school’s defense team will be watching. Everything you or your child posts — about the hazing, about the school, about the case, about the settlement you read about — can be screenshotted and used. The rule is silence until the case is resolved.
Preserve everything. Screenshot and save every text message, every social media post, every communication related to the hazing. Save the school’s communications — emails, letters, disciplinary notices. Do not delete anything, and do not let your child delete anything, even if it is embarrassing or painful. That digital trail is the evidence that wins the case.
Call us. The consultation is free. The phone call costs you nothing. The preservation letter that goes out the day you call is the first step in freezing the evidence before it disappears. We work on contingency — we do not get paid unless we win your case. That means the cost of building the case, sending the letters, filing the lawsuit, taking the depositions, and retaining the experts is ours, not yours, until the case resolves.
Frequently Asked Questions
### What does it mean that one family settled in the Ursuline hazing case?
It means one defendant — the family of one former player — has resolved their portion of the lawsuit. The case against the remaining defendants — potentially including other individual players, their families, the coaching staff, the school, and the Diocese — continues. A settlement with one party narrows the case and frees up resources to focus on the institutional defendants, where the greatest liability and the deepest coverage typically sit. It is a strategic development, not the end of the litigation.
### Can I sue a school for hazing in Ohio?
Yes. Ohio Revised Code § 2307.44 specifically authorizes a civil action for damages caused by hazing, and it permits the recovery of attorney fees on top of the damages. The claim can be brought against the individuals who participated in the hazing, the parents of minor participants, the school for negligent supervision and failure to enforce anti-hazing policies, and the coaching staff for breach of their duty to supervise and report. Collin’s Law (HB 110) further strengthened the reporting and prevention obligations of educational institutions, giving you additional regulatory standards to measure the school’s conduct against.
### How long do I have to file a hazing lawsuit in Ohio?
Ohio’s general personal injury statute of limitations gives you two years from the date of the injury to file. For a minor, that clock is typically tolled — it does not start running until the child turns eighteen. So a child hazed at age fifteen would generally have until their twentieth birthday to file. But the deadline to file and the deadline to preserve evidence are completely different clocks. The evidence — texts, social media, coach communications, witness memories — can disappear in days or weeks. The day you call a lawyer is the day the evidence gets frozen.
### What is Collin’s Law and how does it protect my child?
Collin’s Law — House Bill 110, passed in 2021 — is Ohio’s most significant anti-hazing legislation. It expanded the legal definition of hazing to include coerced acts that create a substantial risk of mental and physical harm. It increased the criminal severity classifications for hazing offenses. And it imposed heightened reporting and prevention requirements on educational institutions — meaning schools are legally obligated to have anti-hazing policies, to train staff on those policies, and to report hazing incidents when they occur. If a school failed to meet these obligations and your child was harmed as a result, the failure is itself evidence of institutional negligence.
### Can the school’s anti-hazing policy protect it from liability?
Having a written anti-hazing policy does not shield a school from liability if the policy was not enforced. A policy that exists on paper but was never trained on, never investigated under, and never used to discipline offenders is not a defense — it is evidence that the school knew the danger was foreseeable and chose to address it with paper instead of action. If hazing was systemic, repeated, and known to coaches or administrators, the policy’s existence actually helps your case by establishing that the school recognized the risk and then failed to act on its own acknowledgment.
### What if my child was partly at fault or went along with the hazing?
Ohio follows a modified comparative negligence standard with a 51% bar — but this standard is far less relevant in intentional tort and hazing contexts than in ordinary negligence cases. A minor cannot legally consent to being hazed. The “code of silence” that hazing culture enforces — threats, social pressure, fear of being labeled a snitch — means that apparent participation is not true consent. The defense may try to argue your child “went along with it,” but the law recognizes that coercion and peer pressure vitiate consent, especially when the victim is a child and the aggressors are teammates in a position of trust.
### How much is a hazing case worth in Ohio?
Individual defendant settlements are typically bounded by the parents’ homeowners’ insurance limits, generally in the $100,000 to $300,000 range. The total case value against the school and Diocese can range from approximately $150,000 to $1,250,000 or more, depending on the severity of the harm, the evidence of prior knowledge by the institution, and whether punitive damages are available for reckless disregard of your child’s safety. Economic damages — counseling, medical expenses, tuition loss — are uncapped. Non-economic damages are subject to Ohio’s statutory caps unless the injury is catastrophic. Every case is valued on its own facts, and past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes.
### What evidence do I need to preserve after hazing?
Everything. Text messages between players, group chats where hazing was discussed or planned, social media posts that documented or bragged about the abuse, screenshots of any threats made to keep your child silent, the school’s communications with your family, disciplinary notices, coach emails, and any physical evidence of injury. Do not delete anything. Do not let your child delete anything. Screenshot and save digital communications immediately — Snapchat stories disappear in twenty-four hours, group chats can be deleted in seconds, and Instagram messages can be erased with a swipe. The preservation letter we send the day you call is what freezes the institutional records — school disciplinary files, coach communications, internal incident reports — before they can be “lost” or purged.
### Can coaches be held responsible for hazing they did not stop?
Yes. Coaches owe a direct duty to supervise students and to report known or suspected hazing. If a coach knew about the hazing culture — and in a football program where hazing is systemic, the evidence often shows they did — and failed to intervene, failed to report, or looked the other way, the coach faces direct negligence claims separate from the school’s vicarious liability. Collin’s Law’s reporting requirements make this especially powerful: if the law required the coach to report and they did not, the failure to report is itself a violation that strengthens the civil case.
### What if the school says they did not know about the hazing?
In a football program where hazing is systemic, the school almost always knew. The proof lives in the school’s own files — disciplinary records, prior parent complaints, internal incident reports, coach communications. If those records show prior incidents that were quietly handled instead of being reported as Collin’s Law requires, the “we did not know” defense collapses. And if the records were destroyed or cannot be located after we formally demanded their preservation, the court can instruct the jury to assume the missing records contained evidence unfavorable to the school. The code of silence works both ways — and a preservation letter is how we break it.
Why This Firm
Ralph Manginello has spent 27 years in courtrooms, including federal court. He is the managing partner of this firm and the lead counsel in an active $10 million hazing lawsuit — a case that involves the same architecture of institutional failure, the same code of silence, and the same fight to hold adults accountable for a culture they built and failed to control. Ralph was a journalist before he was a lawyer, which means he knows how to find the story the institution does not want told — and how to tell it to a jury in a way that changes the math. He is a member of the Texas Trial Lawyers Association, the Houston Bar Association, and the Trial Lawyers Achievement Association. He takes Ohio hazing cases with local counsel where required, and he does not charge a fee unless the case is won.
Lupe Peña is our associate attorney and a former insurance-defense attorney who spent years inside a national defense firm — the rooms where claims like yours are priced, denied, and devalued. He knows how the adjuster sets the reserve in the first forty-eight hours, how the recorded-statement call is engineered to get your child to minimize the harm, and how the quick settlement check arrives before the medical results do. He uses that inside knowledge for your family now. Lupe is fluent in Spanish and conducts full consultations in Spanish without an interpreter.
We work on contingency. The fee is 33.33% before trial and 40% if the case goes to trial. We do not get paid unless we win your case. The consultation is free. The preservation letter goes out the day you call. We have recovered $50 million plus for injured clients across our history, including a $5 million plus brain-injury settlement, a $3.8 million plus amputation settlement, and a $2.5 million plus truck-crash recovery. Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes — but the infrastructure that produced those results is the same infrastructure that builds your hazing case from the first phone call to the verdict.
This is legal information, not legal advice. Every case is different. Contacting the firm is free and confidential. Hablamos Español. If your child has been hazed — on a football field, in a locker room, on any team at any school — the evidence is dying and the clock is running. Call us at 1-888-ATTY-911 or contact us for a free consultation. No fee unless we win. That is our promise, and we keep it.